


8UK11S2E

by swaddledog



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Abuse, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Powers, Brainwashing, Bucky Barnes Has Issues, Dehumanization, F/M, Feral Behavior, Food Issues, Government Conspiracy, Human Experimentation, M/M, Non-Serum Steve Rogers/Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes | Shrinkyclinks, Pre-Serum Steve Rogers, Slow Burn, Sort Of, Stubborn Steve Rogers, Winter Soldier Bucky Barnes, except Bucky, is there an annoyance to lovers tag?, librarian Steve Rogers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-10
Updated: 2019-01-10
Packaged: 2019-10-07 20:05:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,494
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17372432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/swaddledog/pseuds/swaddledog
Summary: Steve Rogers has it as good as an American born into poverty can get: half a college education cut short due to lack of funds, a decent enough day job that barely makes ends meet for him, and a solid group of friends to make it all worthwhile. But then somebody starts stealing books from his library, and things take a turn for the weird. Like cyborgs and super-soldiers weird. He didn't mean to get caught up in a bizarre conspiracy. He just wanted the damn books back.





	8UK11S2E

There's a Question for every job and major everywhere that you shouldn't ask the person working said job or major unless you want to look like a total rube who everyone is going to roll their eyes at once their back is turned. Cashiers get the _since there's no tag is it free?_   Sam gets asked if he's majoring in psychology because _he's the one who's_ really _crazy_ on a regular enough basis that it's become an in-joke that he is, in fact, the most secretly deranged person on the planet. Whenever Natasha is asked _so what's your philosophy?_ she generally responds _to not ask stupid questions._ She says it weeds out the weak. Apparently, most people are weak.

When he could still afford to be in school, Steve's Question was less of a Question and more of a factual statement about how poor he was going to be one day because art majors were useless. The joke was on them though-he'd always been poor, so he had nowhere to go but up. Although it turns out, there's not a whole lot of room for upward mobility. Not when corporations and millionaires need their tax breaks and the good Christian public can't be bothered with financing the poor's extravagant desires like 'not starving to death' and 'not dying of curable diseases'. It's difficult to make school your priority when you can barely scrape together money for the necessities. Maybe he would've been better off in a different major. He couldn't say for sure. But he was betting it didn't make much difference, since school turned out to be pretty fucking unaffordable once he lost his scholarship.

It was okay though. He was a determined person. The good thing about art was that, yeah, you could get a lot out of going to school for it. But you could also learn a lot online, and practice was more important than anything else and he could do that for close enough to free, while his paints and stuff lasted. And once that ran out, there was always the slightly more affordable alternative of pens, pencils, and papers. So he made a little money that way and tried to reinvest what he could into more supplies to keep the freelance thing going in hopes he'd get to go back to school someday. He wasn't sure how much of a portfolio he could ever put together though, since a lot of the work he did was tailored to very unique requests made by the customer.

Sam called it weird porn. Steve was a 'whatever floats your boat' kind of person but if he was being honest with himself, yeah, sometimes it was just weird porn. But people paid him for it so he wasn't about to complain too much. He never thought in all his high school art classes that he'd ever find himself looking for references to tentacles and anuses at the same time, but life can lead you to interesting places if you keep an open mind. For obvious reasons, of the two jobs he had, the freelance artist one was not one he told many people he had when asked what he did for a living. He could only imagine the Question he would get from people. Steve figures he's actually pretty lucky on that front because his Question for his more normal work could actually lead to an enjoyable conversation. The Question for him, a lowly book shelver at the public library, is _so you must like books?_ And the answer is yes, yes he does like books and then the other person will either explain how reading is _just not their thing_ or they'll have a lot to say and maybe Steve will have made a friend.

He liked working at the library. It was generally pretty quiet. No one yelled in his face that he was personally responsible for all the ills of humanity over a twenty-five cent discrepancy in the price on a twenty four pack of Cokes. He hardly ever saw his boss so he didn't suffer a lot of undue harassment on that front. Never had any time wasting meetings filled with business jargon or bland the-competition-is-doing-it customer service tactics. And as a plus he pretty frequently came across interesting books as he worked. All in all he loved the job.

The public library was noticeably different than the one at the college he used to attend. Yeah, the school library tended to have more specific and detailed academic oriented books, from various points in history and from different countries. The public library mainly had stuff in English and Spanish and some old stuff that nobody checked out got sold instead of left on the shelf to collect dust. A big difference, though, was that public libraries attracted a lot of homeless people. It made sense, and Steve wasn't one to complain. Better than them being out there freezing and getting rained on or whatever else. Better than them being harassed or bothered by people. He felt bad for the ones that got kicked out of the building when they talked to themselves in a way that made other patrons uncomfortable, but no amount of arguing with security was changing their minds. Most of them kept to themselves and the worst offense most of them committed was falling asleep at one of the tables.

Steve knew some of them by name, but most of them didn't talk much and Steve was never sure if they didn't want to be bothered or if they were just so used to being ignored they didn't try. He made a point to say hello and smile and make eye contact when he saw someone he didn't recognize to try to make them feel welcome. To let them know the offer of conversation was on the table. Sometimes he went ignored but sometimes the other person seemed to appreciate the gesture.

He was sorting books on the third floor. In the back corner, out of the way. There was only one table back there, at the end of the shelf he was standing in front of. One guy was sitting at it and Steve initially pegged him as one such homeless person, a new one he hadn't seen in here before. He was dirty, his hair nearly down to his shoulders. Clothes were a rumpled mess that clearly didn't fit him, torn in some places, stained in others. Steve hadn't seen him around before but he hadn't been at work the past two days. He was glaring down at the book on the table and Steve wondered if maybe he was illiterate. He'd seen it before, someone trying to force the letters to make sense through sheer willpower. An alternative was maybe he didn't speak or read English. A third option was he just always looked that pissed off.

Steve hadn't exactly been staring. Just glancing over at him a few times between shifting books around, trying to place whether he'd seen him before or not. On the third glance though, the guy was staring back at him, no longer looking pissed but-

He had a pretty intense, bare gaze. Like he held nothing back, didn't hide anything. And right now he had a cautious kind of curiosity as he stared at Steve. Had he noticed he was being looked at? Steve suddenly felt caught somehow, even if all he was doing was keeping aware of his surroundings. Some people were pretty sensitive though, and Steve wasn't going to hold it against anyone for not wanting to be watched. "Hello," he said in the typical, friendly voice he used for everyone else, adding the same kind of smile.

The guy blinked once at Steve's greeting but didn't react otherwise at first. Then he said lowly, as if more to himself than to Steve, "Hel-lo." Like he was testing a word he'd never heard before. So maybe English wasn't his first language after all? Steve had to wonder how long he'd been in New York-or America, for that matter-without speaking to anyone because even a TSA agent might say hi before they look over your ticket or pat you down.

Steve was still being stared at and now felt like he was the one being studied so he asked, "English? Habla ingles?" He didn't speak a whole lot of Spanish and he was sure he was saying it wrong somehow. Typical art major, he'd studied French instead.

" _Hablo_ _catorce idiomas_ _._ "

"Um," Steve said, feeling like an idiot now. What was the point of this? He couldn't understand the guy. "I actually don't speak Spanish. I just-if you need help with anything-" He cut himself off with a sigh. He wanted to explain there were people on staff who did speak Spanish but the guy had been just fine until Steve interrupted him.

"Help," the guy echoed, again in the same way he'd said 'hel-lo', stilted, slow, like he was testing it.

Steve nodded. "Help," he repeated back. He thought of 'help' in French, wondering if it might tip him off on what it was in Spanish. It didn't. He glanced at the book the guy was reading. It was one of those self-help books clearly designed to make money for the scam artist of an author. The subtitle read _Fix Your Broken Brain By Healing Your Body First_ _._ No doubt it was meant to be paired with an expensive recipe book, because how else were you supposed to get rid of the toxins? Steve had been recommended enough books like that by well-meaning people enough times to spot them from a mile away. The guy looked down at his book and went back to reading it-or maybe just staring at it, Steve couldn't be sure.

Steve waited a beat, making sure he wasn't about to look up again or start talking. But he didn't. He just kept his focus on the book. So Steve went back to work, figuring he'd bothered the guy enough. If he needed real help, maybe he'd ask somebody.

The rest of his work day went pretty smoothly. Not that his failed attempt at conversation with that guy was what he'd call a bad experience. It was just an awkward one. There were no unscheduled stops on the train home. No fights. No harassment to address. A pretty good evening, all in all. So he was in a fair enough mood when he made it back to the place he split with Sam.

They'd never lived in the dorms. Too expensive. That turned out to be a good thing because it meant when Steve dropped out of school, he didn't have to put Sam in an awkward position. Neither of them said it, but there was no way either one could afford to live without a room mate in this city. Steve didn't see that changing any time soon. Maybe Sam could, when he graduated and found a job. Steve though...

He tried not to think too hard about it. He'd figure something out when the time came.

"So, did I let myself into the wrong apartment today or did Steve Rogers really make it through twenty-four hours without getting the shit beat out of him?" Sam asked when he made it home.

"Not too late to pick a fight, Wilson. Feeling lucky?" Steve asked as he picked through the mail. He gasped suddenly, holding up an envelope. "The warranty on our vehicle is about to expire!" He chucked the envelope at Sam, who caught it with a snort before dropping it in the trash.

"Plans tonight?" Sam asked as he looked in the fridge.

Steve went on his tip toes to look over Sam's shoulders. He'd forgotten he had half a burger still left in there, so dinner was going to be a cinch. "Yeah, another late night with Netflix."

"Nobody asking for weird porn today?"

"You could be the first," Steve offered, pulling out the burger and an orange.

"That's okay. I like my cartoons with their clothes on. Wild, I know."

Steve smirked and shook his head. He was lucky to have a friend with a sense of humor about it, instead of one who'd flip out and call him gross or something. "How about you?"

Sam shrugged but his enthusiasm suddenly seemed drained. "No."

Steve dumped his burger on a plate and put it in the microwave. Then he followed Sam, who'd disappeared into the living room. "Leila busy or something?" he asked, already surmising the answer. Things had been rocky between them for a few days. Sam was better at talking about these things than Steve. He could actually figure out how to express himself without first passing through the violent ball of rage phase that Steve hadn't managed to circumvent yet.

"No, we're just-" He shrugged. "Not a thing anymore."

Steve hummed, watching the television as it turned on. "Sorry to hear that. You want me to go pick up some beers or something, a movie-"

"Steve, who the hell 'picks up a movie' anymore?"

"It's not like I work at a _library_ that _rents_ movies to people, but I can soundly say, many people still pick up movies."

Sam smiled a little but shook his head. "I'm good. That relationship was terminal anyway. Only a matter of time and I just dragged it out."

"Well, at least you can move on to something that won't have the doom and gloom hanging over it, right?" Something Steve respected about Sam was that he didn't have a tendency to trash people over stuff like this. He'd never suddenly decided any of his exes were horrible people or crazy or whatever else a lot of folks did to make themselves feel better about being dumped. Steve tried to do the same. His own last relationship had ended when she'd moved and the split had been...almost mutual. Neither of them saw themselves being too happy about a long-distance kind of thing. The idea of her being thousands of miles away, just sitting around when she should be enjoying the prime years of her life, meeting other people, it felt criminal, almost. Like he'd be keeping her locked up or something. Didn't make it hurt any less to see her go. It'd been nearly a year and he still missed her.

"Yeah. Hell, we aren't that old yet, so I figure maybe I'll give one last go at that single life thing. There's perks to that."

"You're on your own time, all the time," Steve agreed.

"No obligations."

"Saves money."

"No stress."

Steve let out a breath through his nose. "We sound like losers, Sam."

"I know, man," Sam agreed, starting in on a video game. "But hey. They say life comes at you fast. So we'll see."

The microwave dinged in the kitchen. Steve muttered as he went to retrieve his burger, "Yeah, well, let's hope so."

 

 


End file.
